Wrentham to Dedicate Memorial Saturday to French Army that Camped There

On Saturday, August 9th at 1:00PM the Wrentham Historical Commission will be unveiling the Rochambeau and French Army Encampment Memorial to honor the enduring friendship between France and the United States, along with the sacrifices made for American independence.

More particularly, the Memorial will make the site of the December 1782 encampment of General comte de Rochambeau and the French troops who were the key to Washington’s victory over Lord Cornwallis and the British Army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October of 1781. That footsore multitude of more than 5000 soldiers had begun their American adventure in Newport, Rhode Island, marching from there to the war’s final decisive encounter in Virginia and then retracing their steps, but with the eventual goal of embarking from Boston.

Above, Rochambeau and Washington at Yorktown as depicted by a French painter.

For the march from Providence to Boston, Rochambeau organized his forces by regiment, beginning with the Bourbonnois, which left its encampment in North Providence on 1 December and marched 16 miles to its next camp in Wrentham.

The units that followed were the Soissonnois, Saintonge and Royal Deux-Ponts Regiments of Infantry, and Auxonne Artillery. They eventually departed Boston for the Caribbean on Christmas Day 1782

The Wrentham stop, in which French soldiers dramatically outnumbered the locals, seems to have gone off without a hitch – but never got a proper memorialization.

According to Wrentham Historical Commission member, Greg Stahl, the idea of a marker or monument was first proposed more than a century ago but the effort never got off the ground. In recent years, there has been a national effort, at least among the states of the east coast, to mark and memorialize the Route of the French Army  -- the Washington Rochambeau Revolutionary Route. With the nation’s 250 anniversary in process, marking Wrentham’s important role only made sense.

The Memorial is at the King Philip High School at the tennis courts on Franklin Street (Route 140), more or less the exact location of the camp site.